


Shouldn'ts and Shoulds

by slightlykylie



Category: Desperate Housewives
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlykylie/pseuds/slightlykylie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bree thinks it's high time she made a few rules to deal with the Mary Alice situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shouldn'ts and Shoulds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/gifts).



Bree thinks it's high time she made some rules to deal with the Mary Alice situation.

 

Not that there's a “situation,” really. Surely one lascivious dream doesn't rise to that level. Bree's sure it means nothing. Still, in its wake, a few rules wouldn't be amiss. Rules to keep things contained. Bree goes into the kitchen, removes from the refrigerator her helpful magnetized pad of paper with _Things to Do_ written across the top in heavily curlicued letters, then pauses; _Things Not to Do_ would be more to the point, and this has to be exactly right. She goes to Rex's study for paper but finds herself thwarted by _From the Desk of Rex Van de Kamp._ Printer paper is unlined, and she doesn't want her letters going askew; she has multiple varieties of stationery, but stationery is meant to be sent out, has a public feel to it, and this couldn't be more private; looseleaf paper from one of Danielle's notebooks is too casual. At this point it occurs to her that maybe she doesn't want to do this after all – can't she just continue to ignore it, shove it away, pretend it isn't there? – but then she's overwhelmed with a sense memory of the dream again, and she grits her teeth and goes to the attic to dig through a dusty box of unused Christmas presents to find a journal someone gave her three Christmases ago. Bree isn't the journal type, God knows, but perhaps that's what she needs now. She goes to the kitchen table, but finds it too public, then goes to the bedroom and feels the dream washing up around her again. Finally she finds herself in the dining room, whose formality soothes her. She shuts the door firmly behind her, opens the journal to the first thick, ivory page, and begins to think.

 

(Bree's not sure when the problem started, not really. She's not sure when poker nights stopped being about communing with friends and started being about watching Mary Alice. The way the light catches in her cinnamon-sugar hair, the faint rose flush of her cheeks when she tips her head back to laugh, the gentle velvet tones when her voice drops and softens – but that happens more when they're alone. Bree likes the easy, unstudied grace of Mary Alice's movements and the May-sunshine warmth of her smile and she likes the sincerity that breathes through every word Mary Alice speaks and the way she's terrible at bluffing and the way her gray eyes widen at a new piece of gossip and –)

 

Bree scratches the number _1_ on her pad. _May only make lemon-poppyseed muffins--_ Mary Alice's favorite -- _for every third poker game._ She pauses for a second, writes _1a. May only make a separate batch of lemon-poppyseed muffins for Mary Alice once a month._ That done, she taps the pen against the paper, feeling virtuous. Of course she'll miss the smile that breaks across Mary Alice's face when Bree holds out the basket, she'll miss the way Mary Alice's eyes close at the first bite, as if in bliss, a bliss Bree created for her, but –

 

 _2\. No more lavender vanilla candles in the house._ The kind Mary Alice burns, its scent announcing her presence, her aura. Bree had bought a tumbler jar of it for the living room and a couple of votives for the bedroom, but yesterday Andrew had noticed, had asked derisively why the house smelled like Zach Young. Apparently the boys at school made fun of Zach for the scent. Later that evening, when Andrew was rude to her at dinner, Bree upped his punishment from three days' grounding to a week.

 

There. Those were easy. Bree writes _3_ and then stalls out, mind blank. It takes her a minute to realize she's been trying to come up with solutions to the problem without thinking about the problem. Of course, maybe the lavender vanilla candles in the bedroom were the problem. Surely she'd never have had the dream otherwise. Yes, surely that's it. (Though she can't use the candle as an excuse for what had happened last night, when Rex had reached over to squeeze her breast perfunctorily before sleep and she'd closed her eyes and suddenly it wasn't his hand on her but hers, Mary Alice's, fingers soft and slender and knowing, and somehow without quite knowing how Bree was straddling Rex the way she'd straddled Mary Alice in the dream, her eyes closed to keep the fantasy going. Rex's cock hadn't gotten in the way of the fantasy – in the dream Mary Alice had had a penis herself, because Bree honestly isn't sure what two women are supposed to do in bed together without one – and as she'd impaled herself on him her eyes had stayed closed and the scent of lavender vanilla had touched her nostrils, mixed with the scent of sex, with the scent of _her_. And she'd bucked and thrust with a force that stunned her and surprised even Rex, and something had been building, building, and then he'd let out a loud, orgasmic, and thoroughly male groan and just like that everything had evaporated and her eyes opened. She fell sideways off him, panting, and he raised himself on one elbow to look at her. “Not bad,” he said, and then rolled over and went to sleep. Bree had lain awake for at least another two hours, body aching and throbbing with a yearning she had no idea how to fulfill.)

 

 _3\. If Mary Alice touches me casually, wait 1-2 seconds and then pull away_. _Maintain appropriate distance at all times._ No more letting her own hand linger when Mary Alice's brushes her fingers on the tabletop, or even more thrillingly, under it. No more sitting with her knee a half-inch from Mary Alice's, hoping Mary Alice's knee will press up against hers. No more electric thrill of skin against skin, no more head-rush at the press of warm flesh. No more.

 

 _4\. No more..._ Bree pauses, knowing what she wants to outlaw next, but unsure how to phrase it. She wants – no, scratch that; she _needs_ to stop the conversations they've started having lately, the ones that mean too much. That matter too much. The conversations that happen when they're alone, the ones where every word is pregnant with meaning yet unbirthed and Bree can feel frightening intimacy pulsing in the pauses. The ones where she's both elated and terrified by possibility.

 

(“I wish I knew you better, Bree,” Mary Alice had said once, and Bree laughed, startled. “I think you know me as well as anyone,” she'd said.

 

Mary Alice had said “I wish I knew you better than that.” And she'd put her hand on Bree's on the table.

 

Bree didn't pull away.)

 

_4\. No more conversations that..._

 

(The conversation the day before the dream. The girls had gone home from poker at Mary Alice's house, everyone but Bree; both Mary Alice and Bree had had a little too much wine. Bree was feeling that pull, the feeling she always got when she'd been drinking, the pull towards _more –_ a pull to do things she shouldn't, say things just to hear what they'd sound like out loud. And Mary Alice had said, “Bree, have you ever done something wrong?”

 

“Of course I've done things wrong,” Bree said, but her laughter came a beat late; she was caught off-guard by the gravity of Mary Alice's tone. “Everyone does.”

 

“I don't mean a little thing,” Mary Alice replied, voice low. “And I don't mean an accident. I mean a choice you've made. A time when you've looked at the _right_ choice and... rejected it.” Again, she reached out and placed a hand on Bree's. Bree could feel the cold band of Mary Alice's wedding ring against her skin, underscoring the heat of Mary Alice's skin. She felt her own skin warming in response, and Mary Alice's fingers moved gently on her own, a motion just shy of stroking. Bree tried to think of an answer, but she found herself half-hypnotized by the feel of Mary Alice's skin, by the urgency in her eyes. She's left with blunt, immediate, half-formed images: images of Mary Alice's hand in her own, and then images of her hand stealing up Bree's arm, sliding back the sleeve of her twinset sweater – images of the sweater arcing over her head, her skirt puddled on the floor – swirling, intoxicating images of bare flesh –

 

“I try not to do things like that,” she said abruptly. She could feel the chill it put in the air. But Mary Alice didn't pull away.

 

“What would make you do... something like that?” Mary Alice asked. Bree couldn't tell if she was imagining the innuendo in Mary Alice's tone. If she was projecting. Mary Alice added one more word, slow. “Love?”

 

Feeling herself balanced on the edge of a cliff, Bree nodded once. “Maybe.”

 

Mary Alice's smile burst out like the sun from behind clouds. “Then again,” she said, “is anything wrong if you do it for love?”

 

Bree had no idea how to answer. She had an idea that she might not have to answer. She's on the verge of leaning forward, on the verge –

 

And the phone rang.)

 

And the phone rings.

 

Bree jumps, her pen skittering across the page, feeling for a moment as if she's been caught out. She begins to relax as the phone rings once, twice, three times, but not trusting her voice yet, she decides to let the machine get it.

 

A beep, and then Mary Alice's voice fills the room.

 

“Bree? Are you there?” There's an urgency to her voice, a desperation maybe – a tone to match the look in her eyes when she had talked to Bree about wrong things. “I saw your car's in the driveway and I thought maybe --” She breaks off, tones ragged. “Look, I – there's something that – well, I'd like to talk to you. I've wanted to talk to you about it for so long, and I've never been able to. But today --”

 

Bree is up and across the room, has her hand on the phone, before something in her says, _Wait._

 

She glances back at the pad of paper on the table. The pad of paper that says _4\. No more conversations..._

 

No more conversations _exactly like this one_.

 

Because Bree has a pretty good idea of what Mary Alice is going to say. And it's the one thing they absolutely have to leave unsaid. All of her rules boil down to this: _this needs to stay unsaid._

 

Mary Alice's voice is losing confidence now. “-- well, if you could just – call me,” she says, and hangs up.

 

Bree presses her lips together in a thin line. She goes back to the pad of paper, picks up the pen, and puts a period at the end of the last line.

 

_4\. No more conversations._

 

That rule turns out to be easy to fulfill after that day.

 

When she hears of Mary Alice's suicide, Bree is sobbing so hard it's difficult to hit the delete button on the answering machine. 


End file.
